Israel and the United States will be allowed to bring their own security force to protect athletes during the Olympic Games in August.

Most of the other delegations at the Aug. 13-29 games will be guarded by Greek security, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

However, Israel and the United States will bring an unspecified number of security guards to protect their athletes, the report said.

[Greece plans to enforce a no-fly zone over the Olympic sites and to hoist a huge aerostat surveillance system, Middle East Newsline reported.] "Competitors from high risk countries, presumably including the United States, Britain, Spain, and Israel, will have Greek security escorts," the report said. "Some, including the U.S. and Israeli teams, also will have their own security forces. The U.S. State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security will provide the U.S. Olympic team with a security force of 100-110 agents, analysts, and administrators."

The congressional study, entitled "Greece: Threat of Terrorism and Security at the Olympics," reviewed Greece's military preparations for the Olympic Games. They included the installation of 1,400 security cameras stationed at Olympic facilities and central points around Athens.

The Greek government has awarded $250 million to the U.S.-based Science Applications International Corp. to provide components of the security infrastructure.

SAIC heads an international consortium that includes Germany's Siemens, Sweden's Nokia, AMS, E Team, and the Greek companies Altec, Diekat, and Pouliadis-PC Systems. The consortium has been constructing a security command and control center to connect the police, the national first aid center, fire department, coast guard and military.

But the report, authored by Middle East analyst Carol Migdalovitz, did not rule out major deficiencies in security because of a delay in Olympic Village construction. The report said contractors could not install surveillance cameras without walls, and police could not review security pitfalls during construction.

The report cited some of the Israeli security help provided for the Olympic Games. Israel, a member of the seven-nation advisory board on Olympic security, has conducted training to identify and neutralize suicide bombers.

With the exception of figure skating, women's gymnastics, basketball, men's hockey, and on occasion boxing, track, and skiing, the Olympics are a huge financial bust. Just about every city that's ever hosted has lost money, sometimes (places like L.A. and Atlanta) make money on later use of the facilities. The only real winners have been places like Lake Placid and Squaw Valley. Greece will never be able to make back the money this costs them, and that's if everything goes well. If there is a terrorist attack it will spell financial ruin for Greece.

IIRC, Los Angeles Games actually made $200 million from the games themselves. This then caused all sorts of cities to start bidding for the games and helped to foster all the corruption that followed. Most of that money went to the US Olympic Committee. The city of Los Angeles made money because most of the facilities already existed. They did make more on the facilities that were built.

I knew the LA Games did make money, but I wasn't sure how much. However, in fairness, the LA Games were big because the Americans did so well (the Soviet Bloc boycotted). The last summer games to have a big "West vs. East" rivalry was Montreal in 76 and that was a huge loser. Lake Placid in 1980 was possibly the greatest Olympiad ever.

Rhythmic Gymnastics was the first venue to sell out at the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. It is HUGELY popular in Europe. The girls are "stars" and rightly so - they're drop-dead gorgeous, not to mention Cirque du Soliel material when they retire from competitive life.

The Georgia Dome was the largest indoor arena for gymnastics in the history of the Olympic Games. All sessions of Artistic Gymnastics were sold out (attendance 32400) before the start of the Games. Podium training was sold as a ticketed session and was attended by over 78600 spectators. The attendance set new spectator records for the Olympic Games Gymnastics sessions, averaging over 31600 for each session in totalling 557937! Rhythmic Gymnastics included 41610 attendance !

Hopefully, this Security force includes a large fighter CAP as well as Special Forces circulating near the games. We should share a lot of things with the Israeli's - THEY are our true allies (along with England).

However, in fairness, the LA Games were big because the Americans did so well (the Soviet Bloc boycotted).

That Americans did so well is a conclusion that could only be reached at the conclusion of the games. I suppose that people did decide to buy tickets after the games started, inspired by our performance. I also remember that it was hard to come by tickets to any of the "significant" events at the last minute. You could have bought last minute tickets to, say, boxing, but matchups that occurred early in the competition.

Beware: the Greeks are viciously anti-American, even before the Iraq war. (Not Greek-Americans though.) Not sure why: perhaps a combination of the traditional Greek-Arab friendship (both were ruled by the Turks) and because left-leaning Greeks are WAY left and have never forgiven us for the pre-democratic regime of "the Colonels" (1967-74) which they are sure were all CIA agents.

I wouldn't trust Greek security even if they were all armed with crow bars.

"Competitors from high risk countries, presumably including the United States, Britain, Spain, and Israel, will have Greek security escorts," the report said.

Why did Spain get included? The Spanish government changed right after al-Qaeda blew up some of their trains before the election. Haven't the Spanish been whipped enough?

The consortium has been constructing a security command and control center to connect the police, the national first aid center, fire department, coast guard and military.

It's old news, but isn't it still fascinating that everyone knows all the security is required to keep out practioners of the "religion of peace"? Everyone just accepts that the Muslim terrorists are special cases and we don't criticize the religion that sends them because that would be prejudicial and perhaps even hurtful to their sensitive feelings.

If a world-wide web of terrorist Tibetan Buddhists were on the loose, or better yet, mad bomber Unitarians, their whole organizations would be torn apart and there wouldn't be one quibble about it. But they wouldn't have uncountable petrobucks fueling them, and their creeds are notably pacifist in the first place.

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